Tag: Gordon Brown

“Dar­ling Randy, Here is Mar­tin Gilbert, an inter­est­ing research­ing his­to­ri­an young man, who loves Duff….He is full of zeal to set his­to­ry right. Do see him.” —Lady Diana Duff Cooper’s let­ter of intro­duc­tion of Mar­tin Gilbert to Ran­dolph Churchill, 1962

“Stop that!” Seat­ed beside him at his first appear­ance before the Churchill Society—the sec­ond Churchill Tour on 17 Sep­tem­ber 1985—I had caught Mar­tin Gilbert rif­fling through a brief­case crammed with sheets of yel­low foolscap, toss­ing some out as the min­utes ticked by before his lec­ture, “Churchill’s Lon­don: Spin­ning Top of Mem­o­ries.”

It was the first time I would hear a Gilbert speech, and here he was, culling it already.…

Ever since the BBC and The Dai­ly Tele­graph revealed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma had sent George W. Bush’s Jacob Epstein Oval Office bust of Win­ston Churchill pack­ing (while retain­ing the bust of Abra­ham Lin­coln), the media has been abuzz with spec­u­la­tions over the implied sym­bol­ism.

Per­son­al­ly I think the media just demon­strates its degen­er­ate irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty to keep fan­ning these non- issues. Fifty years ago a dif­fer­ent media would have pub­lished some thought­ful pieces on the future of the US-UK rela­tion­ship. Not any more.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose….When Pres­i­dent Bush had a Churchill bust in the Oval Office, zealots would occa­sion­al­ly demand its return, since in their view Bush was unde­serv­ing, or was using it to pro­claim him­self anoth­er Churchill.…